


San Francisco, 2020

by Elexica



Series: San Francisco, Forever [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: COVID-19 fic, Drabbles, Family, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, None of the characters get sick, i meant for this to be cute but its a little sad, its a little happy too, kid jaden, mentions of childhood trauma, parents joey and seto, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 07:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24347263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elexica/pseuds/Elexica
Summary: Joey and Seto are happily married, enjoying a nice life in San Francisco, and the peace that comes with their adopted son, Jaden, boarding at Duel Academy.However, when the Covid-19 quarantine begins to take effect, Duel Academy goes remote, and the family will have to quarantine together.Just a few little vignettes about the family quarantining together.SF, 2010 is a prequel but essentially unrelated and definitely not at all necessary to understand this little thing.
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Kaiba Seto
Series: San Francisco, Forever [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757809
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	San Francisco, 2020

**Author's Note:**

> Even though there isn’t enough of “SF, 2010” for y’all to be invested in it yet (more is on the way, I promise!), I couldn’t help but be tempted to write this lil thing. It’s been in my head since I saw Jay’s https://jadenvargen.tumblr.com awesome fanart and read this Snapdragonpop007’s "What’s in a Family” collection where they were parents for Jaden. Seriously though, all of Jay’s Seto Kaiba art makes me cry. Loosely inspired by this: https://jadenvargen.tumblr.com/post/180486791145/accept-my-official-pitch-for-the-new-and-improved. 
> 
> As for warnings: this fic discusses Covid somewhat, as the characters are in quarantine, and mentions other times in their lives when they've felt trapped in a house-- though not in depth. If you don't want to think/read about quarantine, skip this fic!! That being said, none of the characters get sick, no one is on the frontlines, and it's more about feelings, and processing how quarantine makes them feel and interact. 
> 
> In terms of timeline, obviously things are not going smoothly in 2010, but everything will wrap up positively at the end of that story (either naturally or by brute force lol).  
> I figure they’re both 30 in 2015, and decide to adopt.
> 
> In the timeline they would adopt 10 yr old Jaden, as it is harder to get older kids adopted (and because it definitely brings some things back for Seto). Trivia: The median age of a child in foster care is 8 in the US. (https://www.adoptuskids.org/meet-the-children/children-in-foster-care/about-the-children) Jaden starts at Duel Academy at 14, so he’d be in his sophomore year in the fic.  
> I sorta thought they’d ended up with Jaden because the only request that they’d made to the agency was that the kid like Duel Monsters…

When the Stay at Home Order came down for the five most populous Bay Area counties, Seto was at work. He had been watching the progression of the virus closely since January—both out of scientific interest and out of concern for the supply chain. 

Joey had been travelling for a tournament – Duel Monsters Europe 2020 – and wanted to get home immediately. But he was terrified that he’d already been exposed, and that he was going to take the virus home and infect his entire family.

“You could stay at a KabiaCorp safe house in Berlin for a couple of weeks,” Seto proposed, diplomatically.

“What?! And be away from our son? From you?!” Joey’s energy and passion hadn’t dipped one bit as he got older.

“I’d take any risk to have you home. But let’s talk to Jaden.” Joey and Seto prided themselves on the fact that their parenting style involved asking their son what he thought of things rather than deciding for him, when it was possible. It was a lesson that they had both learned from their own awful childhoods. 

They never wanted their son to feel powerless in his home, the way that they had. 

Seto added him to the conference call.

“Dad!” Jaden answered the phone with his trademark enthusiasm, “’Sup?!”

“Hey, kid!” Joey said cheerfully.

“Both Dads!” Jaden chirped, before taking a second to think through what was happening. “Wait. Both dads? You guys don’t usually call together. Is something wrong?”

“Duel Academy is going to be closed for Covid-19. Maybe for the rest of the year. It’s a rapidly-developing situation,” Seto stated, knowing that the announcement email was going to be sent to all students within the hour. “You’ll have to come home.”

“And while your dad is in the office so much he’s practically already quarantined,” Joey laughed at his own joke, while Seto snarled on the line, “I’m in Germany right now for a tournament. I have to decide whether I should shelter in place here for a couple weeks in case I have been exposed or go home immediately, and you both will have to shelter in place as carefully as I do. We wanted to talk to you about it. What do you think?”

Jaden’s heart was in his throat. “Of course I want you to come home. Are you sick? Do you have a fever or anything?” Jaden was shocked that they would imply that he would want his dad anywhere but home, especially if he could be sick. Visions of his dad, sick or dying, alone in Germany bit at his mind.

“No, I feel fine. But that doesn’t really mean anything. Your dad is dyin’ to tell you about the science.” Joey laughed again. Seto really did want to provide some scientific background. 

“Umm… I get enough lectures at school. But we can talk about it when I get home. Did Dad send the helicopter yet?”

Joey cracked up on the line again. 

“Dad?” Jaden asked.

“Yes.” Seto answered. “I love you.” And then he hung up.

Joey and Jaden remained on the line. Joey told him to start packing, asked him if he’d talked to his friends about the situation, asked him what his teachers thought. Finally, he asked him how he was feeling. 

“I’m really scared, dad. But I know I’ll feel better when we’re all together again.”

…

Thinking about all of the kids that must be stuck at home was very disturbing to Joey, but it took a week of Joey watching Jaden try and pay attention to the instructors via Zoom before he said anything to Seto.

“I really feel for kids these days. This has got to be hard.” Seto nodded but didn’t look up from his computer, where he was messing with a CAD file for a new Duel Disk. He was sitting on the couch, with Blue, a ten-year-old 6 lb. ultra-fluffy Malti-mutt napping at his side, curled in a ball. Seto had put in a lot of effort to be more emotionally aware, but he still was pretty bad at telling when his husband was trying to start a meaningful conversation, as opposed to the general moping about the current crisis.

“I am glad it didn’t happen when we were teens,” Joey continued. Seto heard the slight twinge of pain in Joey’s voice and looked up, meeting his sad eyes. He closed his laptop to make it clear he was listening.

“Honestly, I don’t know that I would have survived.” Joey sounded darker. He sat down on the counch on the other side of Blue. Seto didn’t break eye contact. 

They sat in silence for a moment. Seto reached his hand over and put it on top of Joey’s. “It’s good that it didn’t.” He said.

Jaden shouted “C’mon Bastion!” at the computer in another room. Hearing their son happy, even under the circumstances, lightened the mood significantly. 

“It’s almost lunch time.” Seto announced, and put the laptop on the polished driftwood coffee table.

The topic was dropped until later that night. They sat next to each other in bed without paying each other any attention, which Joey thought was a very old and married thing to do. Joey was watching Tiger King on his iPad with airpods in and Seto was clicking around on his laptop. Seto sighed, and Joey paused the show and took out his airpods. He wasn’t really enjoying the show anyway—he felt bad for the tigers. They could easily be replaced with holograms, he thought, and then instantly thought he was spending too much time with Kaiba.

“I saw that one of the domestic violence hotlines in Domino is having a fundraiser. I think now would be a good time to donate.” Seto said calmly and looked over at his husband. Joey smiled.

“Yeah.” He kissed him on the cheek. Communication was always going to be hard for them, but his heart swelled a little when he felt understood.

…

“Things are pretty rough out here,” Yugi told Joey through the screen. “Tea’s dance academy has had to close, of course, but everything around here has felt pretty apocalyptic.”

“It’s been a while since we’ve had ta deal with the world ending!” Joey laughed, trying to lighten the sad look in his friend’s eyes. “Things ain’t perfect over here either.”

“I’d take your mansion over our apartment in Brooklyn any day! Tea and I almost fought over who gets to hide in the bathroom to hide from the baby.” The baby let out a happy squeal in the background, and Yugi pushed closer to the camera. “It’s getting desperate.”

Joey laughed, “I’m sure you’ll make it. Let’s see the little guy!” Joey picked up the iPad and walked up to Jaden’s door. He knocked twice, was me with a “come in” and proceeding to enter the room. When Jaden had first moved in, the room was light blue, but since Jaden had been sorted into Slifer Red (and Jaden’s parents had refused to meddle on his behalf), everything had to be red. The red wasn’t quite as scalding as his school uniform, but it was still vibrant, and as full of life as the kid who lived there. Otherwise, the room was a mess—duel monsters cards covered most of the surfaces, as well as soccer trophies and pictures of his friends. The pictures were stuck with thumbtacks straight into the wall, which might’ve caused Jaden a problem if his parents weren’t absolute pushovers when it came to letting him customize his space.

“Jaden! Say hi to your cousin Atem!” Joey shoved the iPad between Jaden and his laptop. Jaden looked up at his dad, who was smiling so wide it made it impossible for Jaden to complain that he’d been in the middle of something else.

“Hey little guy! You look a lot bigger than the last time I saw you, huh!?” Jaden smiled straight into the camera. The baby “glubbed” in response, and then broke into a smile, too.

“OH MY GOD He’s smiling at Jaden!” Joey leaned his head back and shouted, “Set, you gotta see this!”

A minute later, Seto stalked into the room in his black turtleneck and casual dark jeans. “Cute,” he said flatly. He waved his hand to greet Yugi, and removed himself from the camera’s view.

“Seto, the baby recognizes his cousin!!” Joey shouted back.

“It’s only mirror neurons. It’s a biochemical function,” Seto said. “But, the baby is cute. Is everyone safe in New York?”

“Yeah, everyone’s fine, ya buzzkill.”

Seto smirked and walked back out of the room.

…

It was during week eight that things really started to grate on Seto. The last time he had been essentially unable to leave the house was when he was a teen. Some things were so different—their house was grand, perhaps unnecessarily so, but full of warmth and light. There was almost constant joking and laughter from his husband and son. Mokuba videochatted frequently from Domino, and was excited to talk about anything and everything: from the new KC releases, to life in Japan, to his own plans to start a family.

But some things were still especially haunting. Feeling trapped in a mansion was painfully familiar. Every once in a while Seto could swear he could see Gozaburo’s menacing shadow around the spiral staircase, or on the grand ones in the foyer, which looked disturbingly similar to the old Kaiba manor. “For just that split second, it was like I was back there. Like the last 20 years hadn’t happened.” Seto confessed to Joey while they sat together in bed. Seto had kept his laptop open on his lap, and continued to tinker with the specs for the new duel disk, even though the tone of his voice betrayed the seriousness of the conversation.

Joey took the initiative of closing the laptop for him, and Seto was so entranced with his own thoughts he barely removed his hands from the keyboard in time to save them from the lid.

“What do you mean?” Joey asked.

“I think it was a trick of the light, but I felt that pang of fear again. Like I did something wrong. Just seeing a shadow.” Seto said.

Joey wrapped an arm around his husband and pulled him towards his warm chest. He held him there for a few moments, letting the silence coax more explanation from Seto.

“I have always loved our house. I insisted, even when you thought it was too much. Too similar to the manor. But with this lockdown, I think I can see it. I can’t stop seeing it.” Seto released a deep breath. 

“If we need to move, we can. I know Jaden would be ok,” Joey started. They’d outrun a lot of ghosts together and he wasn’t going to let anything change that.

“No. It’s just been so long.” Seto looked up from his lap, and turned his head to stare straight into his husband’s eyes. Joey thought they were as piercing as ever, and maybe even more devastating since the last time he had really looked. “When I was younger, I thought this was something I had to crush. I grew past that, with you. But it’s always going to be there, isn’t it?” Seto was pleading.

“Yes. This’ll always be part of you,” Joey’s hand traced over Seto’s forearm, moving over a scar he had long since memorize. “\But you’ll never have to face it alone again.”

That weekend they visited a home improvement store in cloth masks they’d purchased off of Etsy. Joey’s had a red eyes black dragon on the front, Kaiba’s had a blue eyes blue dragon, and in a move that Jaden had been convinced was rebellious, his bore the image of a winged kuriboh. Kaiba had practically begged him to pick a more dignified monster, but his son refused. “It rocks, Dad!” Joey couldn’t stop laughing. “Should we even be going out? Even with masks?” Jaden argued. 

“This is exactly the time for us to make progress on house projects!” Joey had announced. “Plus, your dad thinks I’m hot when I do home improvement work!”

“Gross!!” Jaden announced, and pushed the cart further from his dads. Seto smirked under his mask.

They picked up a few different components for various projects. Joey made sure to pick out string lights to wrap around the banisters. He wasn’t going to let any ghosts hide in the shadows of his house.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the house: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2820-Scott-St-San-Francisco-CA-94123/2143821426_zpid/ (The pics are publicly available on Zillow, and the listing has been up for 452 days so I don’t think I’m invading anyone’s privacy by linking here—once it is off the market, the link will fail). They moved from the Marina in their 20’s to Pacific Heights in their 30’s because this fic is determined to reflect the San Francisco life cycle of the Unicorn CEO.  
> And yeah I’ve given up it’s gonna be dub names don’t judge me. Also they both go by Dad which is confusing but also I love it.  
> This is intended as a one-shot, but we will see. It stops pretty abruptly—I might write a part two if this goes on much longer.  
> I will also probably write more family stuff, because I LOVE my boys being happy. I'm just making them earn it in the other fic, Ok?! <3


End file.
